Purpose Digital rights management (DRM) is often promoted as the technical basis for solutions to enterprise security problems requiring persistent protection. Yet to date, DRM has failed to take hold within the enterprise sphere. This paper aims to examine some possible reasons for the slow adoption of enterprise DRM. Design/methodology/approach It is argued that contrary to the common perception current DRM technology is sufficiently robust for use in enterprise applications. Then three problems that may serve as barriers to enterprise DRM adoption, namely, trustworthy authentication, access policy management and the lack of compelling enterprise applications that require DRM are discussed. Finally, brief examples are presented drawn from the real world that illustrate that the first two barriers can be overcome, and it is argued that regulatory compliance is the “killer app” that will drive enterprise DRM adoption. Findings Finds, amongst other things, that technical weakness in enterprise DRM systems, especially regarding authentication and authorization, can be addressed with relatively simple mechanisms. Originality/value This paper points up the need for more sophisticated enterprise DRM solutions.

The Secure Virtual Enclaves (SVE) collaboration infrastructure allows multiple organizations to share their distributed application objects, while respecting organizational autonomy over local resources. The infrastructure is transparent to applications, which may be accessed via a web server, or may be based on Java or Microsoft's DCOM. The SVE infrastructure is implemented in middleware, with no modifications to COTS operating systems or network protocols. The system enables dynamic updates to security policies to support changes in both coalition membership and participants' perception of risks. While the prototype demonstrates fine-grained access control for secure collaborative computing, we have identified significant issues that remain to be addressed, particularly in the area of policy development, before such collaboration will be convenient. The SVE infrastructure offers a platform and conceptual basis for further exploration of these issues and experimentation with new solutions.

The SIGMA project is researching the integration and interoperation of security technologies into distributed computing environments based on CORBA, the Common Object Request Broker Architecture. The architectural results described in the paper are focused on security technologies that allow controlled, selective exchange of object oriented services among separate distributed systems that differ in security policy, mechanisms, and assurance. A central goal for our work in this area is to identify and prototype techniques that enable CORBA based application interoperation between trusted and untrusted distributed systems.

In most trusted systems, discretionary access to objects can be obtained in ways not explicitly allowed by the discretionary access control (DAC) policy. This well-understood observation is examined in the context of client-server architectures, and compared both to the traditional understanding of DAC and to existing trusted systems. The results are used as the basis for an argument for a new understanding of DAC and its implications for the design of trusted systems.>